Elementary district hopes to reduce student expulsions

PAUL EAKINS - Staff Writer

ESCONDIDO —— Every year, dozens of students are expelled from
the Escondido Union School District. But many other students in the
elementary district who are heading down the path toward expulsion
are able to return to the classroom, usually with improved grades
and behavior, after attending intervention programs that target
such at-risk children.

A work group of school board members, district officials, school
administrators, teachers and counselors now are recommending that
the district expand its intervention program in a four-step plan
presented at a Dec. 8 school board meeting.

Assistant Superintendent Claudia Boyle led the work group, which
was formed this fall in response to a district goal to improve
student behavior and retention, she said Thursday.

As far as school officials are concerned, expulsion is only a
last resort, she said.

"Expulsion is not something that we do lightly, and we try many
things before we move to expulsion," Boyle said.

A second chance

One intervention program the district often tries is called
Opportunity. As its name implies, the middle school program gives
students another chance to correct their behavior and eventually
return to the regular school setting.

The district has increased funding for the program from about
$320,000 last school year to $460,000 this year, district officials
said.

George Robinson, Del Dios Middle School principal and a member
of the work group, said for some children the transition to middle
school can be difficult, as they take on new responsibilities and
social pressures.

"Every kid has a different story. Some kids have adjustment
issues. We have a significant homeless population. Some kids have
trouble in large groups, they're distracted. Some kids have trouble
around adults because of their experiences at home," Robinson
said.

In Opportunity, which is located at three of the district's five
middle schools and is expanding to a fourth this year, students who
have behavioral problems are placed in a 15-student class. In
addition to regular classroom instruction, the students are visited
by a counselor daily.

As the students progress through the 12-week program and learn
to overcome their personal obstacles, they are given more
privileges such as attending some regular classes, leaving the
classroom for lunch, and eventually participating in school
activities such as dances.

Moving forward

Derek Ferguson, an alert and personable 13-year-old, attended Bear
Valley Middle School earlier this fall until fighting "and doing
stupid stuff" got him in trouble, he said. So he was placed in the
Opportunity program at Del Dios, he said.

While Derek said he used to always sit in the back of the class,
on Friday he was at his now regular seat at the front of the
Opportunity classroom.

"It helps me pay attention more now that there's less kids in
the class and I'm sitting up close to where the teacher is," Derek
said.

Del Dios student Travis Hansen, 12, is one of several students
at the school who are almost ready to leave the program. Hansen
spends at least half his day now in mainstream classes and said he
doesn't have conflicts with the teachers as he did before.

Asked why he had problems last year, Travis said "the teachers
were a pain," but then conceded with a grin that he may have been
part of the problem, too.

Recommendations

Once Opportunity is in place at Rincon Middle School this year,
Bear Valley Middle School will be the only middle school without
the program.

Soon that could change. Initiating the program there is one of
the work group's recommendations.

In addition, the group wants the district to create Community
Day School, at which students who have been expelled or are at high
risk of being expelled could attend class away from the crowds of
mainstream schools.

"The Opportunity program, when it was designed by the state, was
not meant to be the stop before expulsion," Boyle said.

Another recommendation includes changing the composition of the
expulsions panel to include two trained permanent members and one
rotating member. Currently, all three positions are rotated among
district administrators, Boyle said.

The group's last recommendation is to create more consistency
among the 23 district schools' intervention and student support
programs.

"We want to make sure that all of the schools have available a
menu of services for kids," Boyle said.

Increasing expulsions

Despite Opportunity and other intervention efforts such as anger
management classes and counseling, the number of expulsions in the
district has been on the rise in recent years.

In the 2002-03 school year, 35 students were expelled, an
increase of 10 students from the previous year, district officials
said. In 2003-04, the number of students expelled leaped to 64, and
last school year 65 students were expelled.

So far this school year, about four months since the first day
of class, 12 students have been expelled, Boyle said.

The district usually expels students not just for one incident,
but for repeated problems that may continue even after counseling
and other intervention methods have failed, Boyle said.

According to state guidelines, students may be expelled for a
variety of behaviors, from theft and drug possession to using
obscene words and possessing a laser pointer. However, whether a
student is expelled for most behaviors is at the district's
discretion.

Only a handful of the most serious offenses result in mandatory
expulsion, including: possessing a firearm, brandishing a knife at
another person, unlawfully selling a controlled substance, sexual
assault or battery, and possession of an explosive.

While a student may be suspended from school as soon as an
incident occurs, the process to actually expel a student can take
up to a month. The student has a hearing with an administrative
panel that then takes its recommendation to the school board.

But the district can't expel a student without attempting some
form of intervention, Boyle said.